Cunning plan: Oldhammer 40k 2nd Ed

Over the last year and a half I've been slowly working on a 2nd edition scheme with my cunning opponent.

As much as I enjoyed painting and playing my Imperial Knight, and my flyer, as 7th Ed evolves and rumours of 8th Ed float around I find myself more and more drawn to the 40k of the mid 90's. 

So I've been lurking on ebay and grabbing the makings of a Space Wolf and an Ork 2nd ed army. The pics here are missing some of the painted units - some boarboyz, a weird boy, a shokk attack gun with snotlings and a buggy.

Barely knowing anything about the rules, I'm wanting an army like the old school battle reports in the White Dwarfs I used to read in high school - so Gazkhull, a couple mobs of boys, a shokk attack gun, a small cult of speed element, and individual units of things like kommandos and stormboyz for colour, maybe a dreadnought.

The plan is to reuse existing models for as much as I can - I'd love to field all original minis but the price tag would be insane. I'm mostly there, although trying to get some heavy weapons boys is harder than I thought - the ability for individual boyz in a mob to take lascannons, plasma guns, meltas etc is awesome but not something I have easily in my 5th Ed Kanwall army.

Far less trouble for a 2nd Ed SW army as I had alot of the mini's, although I'm hunting down an iron priest and original Njal. But for an initial 1000 points army I can live without either.

The 2nd Ed boxed set and Dark Millenium are OK for my needs - the boxed set is missing alot of the minis, but has all the counters, templates and unit cards I need as well as a bunch of the cardboard ruins that will have to make it onto the battle field. The Dark Millenium is 98% complete, missing only 2 Eldar cards. After reading through the psyker rules I had to include a weirdboy and madboyz into my Ork army for some crazy random fun.

 In a fit of enthusiasm I did paint up two of the plastic marines as grey hunters.

I'm pretty happy with the result (although my freehand pack marking could be cleaner) - whilst the detail is not as good as more modern figs, again its good enough for my needs.

My regular opponent is a long time Squat player, and is putting the finishing touches on Tyranids. Our plan is to try a 1000 points 2nd ed game later this month to test out this crazy ruleset - I need to finish a squad of mad boyz and my orks are ready for a tryout. I'm expecting a battle between two close combat armies to be messy, and genestealers look terrifying in 2nd ed, so should be hilarious (and short!).